


Susurrus

by GreenBird



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Fluff and Angst, M/M, Pale Porn, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Shoosh-Papping, snarly snuggles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-19
Updated: 2015-01-19
Packaged: 2018-03-08 07:36:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3200897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreenBird/pseuds/GreenBird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The Grand Highblood moves off his throne, stepping down to be level with his prey. The Signless looks up at him, red irises bright against pale orange sclera. His face is smooth, impassive, and completely unafraid.</p>
<p>Such a small creature should not be unafraid."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Susurrus

When the Signless is brought before him, the first thing the Grand Highblood notices is how small he is. His shrouded head barely breaches the Highblood’s striped chest, and his shoulders are narrow, juvenile. Such a small creature should not cause such enormous problems for the royals, should not have been so difficult for his Subjuggulators to capture. It took a while, and they had spilled a sea of low blood to get to him, but they were successful.

Now, here he stands, the Signless, captured and presented before his throne.

The Grand Highblood feels a smile cracking his face. The success of his brothers and sisters is a thing to rejoice. Her Imperial Condense will be pleased. He doesn’t much care about her approval, but a victory is a victory, and his siblings are reveling in joy. Their honks and hollers echo off the rainbow walls. The Grand Highblood feels his own laughter bubble and push at his chest, but he stays silent. His curiosity overwhelms his mirth.

He moves off his throne, stepping down to be level with his prey. The Signless looks up at him, red irises bright against pale orange sclera. His face is smooth, impassive, and completely unafraid.

Such a small creature should not be unafraid.

The red eyes entice him, enflamed him. The Highblood shivers in joy and rage. The laughter pushes and rattles at his teeth. He wants terror in those eyes, he wants that familiar contortion of fear. He wants to see him cower. The Highblood spreads his arms and looms over the small, stunted troll, lets his claws gleam in the light. His chest vibrates with low, growling mirth. It builds and twists, and his chucklevoodoos burst from his mouth. His Subjuggulators fall silent to his laughter, watching their leader intimidate the enemy. He sees them shudder and shrink, and he expects the same from the Signless.

The small troll does move, but it isn’t away. The Signless steps into the alcove of his looming body, pulls back his hood and lifts his hands, palm up, to the Grand Highblood’s face. His claws are blunted, his fingers slim and gentle. The chucklevoodoo dies in the Highblood’s throat, stoppered by his own alarm. His shock turns to a familiar rage; his body chills with its icy crackle. The Highblood’s teeth click and chatter, but a sure press against the sides of his face still his jaw.

The Signless’s hands are hot against his skin, chasing away the cold of his anger with a burst of bright warmth.

The haze of the Highblood’s vision clears away, leaving him wide eyed and stunned. Below him, the small form of the Signless stretches to reach him, thin and vulnerable and fearless.

The hands the Highblood held in threat close around the Signless, nearly circling his ribcage. He does not crush him, but pull him closer, lean in further. His hair falls around their faces, wild and musky, dark and enveloping. In the dimness, the Signless’s eyes shine a mutant red, intense and luminous in his peaceful face. The Highblood’s claws dig into the smaller troll’s sides, and he feels his voice click in his throat, feels his laughter bubble up again. The chucklevoodoo expands in his chest, filling his lungs with malicious raucous. The Signless can feel it too, and he paps his hands against the Highblood’s cheeks, lifts himself onto his toes and begins a slow, open hiss.

The Highblood’s mouth opens, but there is nothing there to come out. The pressure in his chest deflates, as if punctured through. His shivers of mirth turn to shivers of awe. The shoosh is long and low and perfect. A circular breath: the susurrus of the sea. The hands on his face stroke and pet, sliding and smearing his war paint, ghosting fingertips against his eyelids. They wander into his tangle of hair, petting his scalp, rubbing against his hornbed. The Signless pulls at him, bending him further. He hisses and whispers, speaks to the things deep within the Highblood’s soul. His eyes find the jagged parts of him, his fingers pet them smooth, his shoosh quiets the cacophony in the indigo troll’s head. The Highblood sways and murmurs under the soporific wash of the Signless’s soothing, lost in the alien sensation of peace.

There is a break in the rhythmic shoosh, a word, a call. It is spoken in the same, soft tone, but it sends a jolt through the Highblood that he has not felt for ages.

His name. The Signless called his name. Not his title, not “The Grand Highblood”, but his name, the one given to him after pupation, the one he lost decades ago. The Signless says it like a prayer, a summon, and the Highblood is filled with the palest of red.

The hands wrapped around the Signless tighten momentarily, lift him up in a gentle embrace. His body is bright and small and warm against him, but it does not burn like the sun. The heat goes to his blood, to his bones.

The Signless wraps his arms around the Highblood’s neck, buries his hands into his ticket of hair. He presses their foreheads together, and does not look away. Red against indigo, hot against cold. The Highblood cannot stop the deep resonating chirrup that has started up in his chest. The Signless is so small, so light in weight but so heavy in understanding.

The Highblood is hardly aware he is carrying him to the door until they are there.

The gate of the hall sways open, exposing the wild coastline beyond. Around him, his Subjuggulators are stunned to silence; and that is wise, for he would bathe in the blood of the one who would tear the Signless away from him.

They do not call him Signless, his followers; they call him the Sufferer. It is a good title, the Highblood thinks: it suits him. He does suffer, and he will suffer more. The darkness and the cold will return, and the Grand Highblood’s duty will return with it. The Sufferer will be culled.

It is soon to be daylight, the edge of the world is nearly aflame, but the Sufferer has always been on the run; he can whether the light. The Highblood pulls a drape from the doorway, a long, indigo sheet. It wraps so well around the small troll before him; hides everything save is brilliant, unwavering eyes. The color will protect him.

The Grand Highblood envelopes the small figure before him in his arms, caging him in. The Sufferer’s warmth flutters against his skin, vibrant and defiant and perfect. It will be put out, but not today.

The Grand Highblood holds the Sufferer in his claws, and he lets him go.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Just a thing I had laying around and never posted. Monster snuggles.


End file.
